Page 95 of The Replay

I let out a dark chuckle. "A forgiving, generous commander."

But I take instructions well, too, and wrap my erection in her nightgown. I finish when her arm comes around me and she's spooning me, kissing next to my shoulder blade, right where I think her flowers are.

And after, I catch my breath with her still behind me, until a deep longing floods my chest. It's a strange feeling. I haven't had it in a long time, yet it's familiar, because it always comes when I'm thinking about Mariana. Except she's right next to me tonight.

I hold her arm around me and cling to the feeling. This is a memory I want to keep, because it's evidence I can miss her even when she's with me. It can't be a feeling triggered by her absence. It has to be the result of yearning for what didn't happen between us. The forever we didn't get, and the one we won't get this time either.

She traces the art on my skin with her free hand. "Do you keep track of the tattoos you get?"

She sighs, and her breath caresses my back.

I interlock my fingers with the hand I have around me. "What do you mean?"

"You have more, but it doesn't look like you collect them for quantity."

"No, I add when I feel like it. Sometimes it's because it's been a while. Sometimes because I want to mark a moment."

"Turn around?"

This time it's not an order. I do it anyway.

She rests on her side, propped with her elbow on the mattress, so she can study me carefully. I smile. Her lipstick is faded, but not smeared when her mouth curls up at the corner. She runs a finger over my now-healed newest ink.

This is a memory I want to keep, too.

"Is this a moth?" she asks.

I nod. "It symbolizes transformation. Growth. Or my favorite, resilience."

I got it to remind me of the strength I needed when Mariana was around.

She traces its wings. "They're also known for pursuing the light, no? Sometimes to their own detriment."

Humor sparkles in her eyes. I purse my lips. My tattoo could signify that too, when not only did I keep coming back to her, choosing her, but it took me less than five minutes to give in to her proposal a few days ago in my car.

"That's not why I got it," I say, "but moths are known for that, yeah."

Her hand travels to my thigh, and she touches the solitary tattoo I have there, on the inside, invisible most of the time. Her bite mark.

"You didn't cover this one," she says.

"I didn't cover any of the tattoos I got while I was with you."

"Not even the carnations."

"The point of tattoos is to have them forever."

"Plenty of people cover them up when they… outgrow… a design."

"Some things are indelible." I caress her face. "And we need to accept them as something we went through."

The smile on her face is soft. "Resilience. I could use some of that, too."

She takes a deep breath and leans to kiss the moth on my chest. Peace and warmth blooms between us. It spreads from the point where her lips touched my skin. The whole moment— I click a picture in my mind, and I promise to print a hundred copies to hide all over my life. In a thousand corners of my mind. So I keep finding them out of the blue, and each time they remind me that we had so much good, too.

"We all could use resilience," I whisper.

She rests her head on my chest. "Cora asked me to go with her on this trip at the end of the week as a strategy. To strengthen the Strike foundation of course, by networking, but also to show a united front as the Sinclair sisters. A sort of, 'Look at us, making our way. Thriving. Prevailing.' She's rocking it as the GM, and I'm going to leave the Strike's foundation fully set up for wonderful things. One of our stops is in Houston. That's still one of Dad's primary offices and he'll hear all about it."